What is happening in the world of luxury?

According to Luxury Clues, the one room in a house associated with extreme wealth is……. A library, implying that the leaders are also the readers. Hard to argue with their reasoning, and a few disturbing statistics about how few people choose either to buy a book, or read.
 

In low income families, you may find a copy of a Bible and the National Enquirer. In middle income family, there may be some books by the toilet. In high income families, there will be a library. In the United States, 85 percent of the population did not buy even one non-fiction book in the last year. Of those who did purchase non-fiction books, 95 percent did not read them.

The full post is here

The International Herald Tribune recently ran a headline, “Lean times for providers of luxury,” in which they suggest that sales of champagne and vodka have dropped 25% this year in a nightclub that caters to Wall street bankers. Not only that, but Bear Sterns recent collapse caused a few upsets in the luxury interior design world.

Less than 48 hours after news broke that Bear Stearns would be bought for a fire-sale price, the wives of two of the firm’s senior investment bankers called their high-end interior designer to cancel their contracts.

It is yet another sign that some American bankers are slashing spending on luxury items as they fear for their jobs and the value of their firms’ shares.

This is not all bad news – apparently, it is now far easier to get a table at any of the high-end restaurants. At least, midweek. And some florists report an upturn in business because of the amount of people sending flowers to the Bear Sterns office to “Cheer them up.” If I had just lost a $2 million a year job, I am not so sure a bunch of flowers would cheer me up much. But there you go….

Full story here.

At the other end of the spend-o-meter, the most exclusive exhibition of automobiles in the world, Top Marques, kicked off in Monaco yesterday, with Damon Hill doing the opening ceremony honors. Luxury, speed and rarity are all on show, with exhibitions from Bugatti, Aston martin and a wide range of other luxury car manufacturers. Tickets are almost as rare as the The SPADA TS “CODATRONCA”, a sports car designed by the Italian studio Spadaconcept which is on display. It combines racing and ‘tourism’ characteristics and represents the latest interpretation of the functional concept of ‘truncated tail.’ As far as I can tell, there seems to be no drop in spending power in Monaco. And it is as hard as usual to get a table in the top restaurants.  This particular blogger will be paying them a visit on Sunday to spend the afternoon looking at cars he can’t afford. According to their press release:

Redefining luxury was not the original objective of Top Marques Monaco when it premiered in 2004. Needless to say the luxury industries already had a long historic of their products’ definition, and we were proud to present them to the public in one of the planet’s great luxury settings, the Principality of Monaco.

Top Marques website.